In Baghdad, a hard-line Shiite cleric named Muqtada al-Sadr organized an army of fanatical followers and urged them to attack Americans.

Chris Kyle -- American Sniper

It’s a great ting in dis goundry to be vree vrom tispep-shia," sighed poor Yucker enviously, casting a stealthy glance at the pit of his ruined stomach.

Joseph Conrad -- Lord Jim

One of my father’s friends is a Shia and he cries whenever he talks about Hussein’s death at Karbala.

Malala Yousafzai -- I Am Malala

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The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi’a.

Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner

Our own founder, Jinnah, was a Shia, and Benazir Bhutto’s mother was also a Shia from Iran.

Malala Yousafzai -- I Am Malala

"That’s the one thing Shi’a people do well," he said, picking up his papers, "passing themselves as martyrs."

Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner

Our own founder, Jinnah, was a Shia, and Benazir Bhutto’s mother was also a Shia from Iran.

Malala Yousafzai -- I Am Malala

It was a book of didactic pronouncements from Imam Ali, the founder of the Shiite sect.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

He wrinkled his nose when he said the word Shi’a, like it was some kind of disease.

Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner

To my amazement, my own husband spouted the Shiite party line, contending that women have more rights than anyone else in Iran.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

How I loathed Iran! I was suddenly aware of Moody’s hand clasping mine, a minor violation of Shiite custom.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

Moody’s family was composed of Shiite Moslems, of which the western world knew little.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

These were Shiite Moslems, still glorying in the success of the revolution, clad in the self-righteous robes of fanaticism.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

It was that of Imam Reza, the Shiite founder.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

The moment we entered the house we heard loud American music and saw the improbable sight of Shiite Moslems dancing to rock-and-roll.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that.

Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner

On August 29, a massive car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in Najaf and killed eighty people, including the revered and greatly loved Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakin.

Marcus Luttrell -- Lone Survivor

Half of the clan lived like Ameh Bozorg, oblivious to squalor, contemptuous of western customs and ideals, and clinging to their own zealous brand of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fanatical Shiite sect of Islam.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

Then came a five-minute segment of Lebanese news because the Shiite Moslems in Lebanon are a strong and violent faction backed by Iran, loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini and a three-minute wrap-up of world news, which meant some negative report about America.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

They separated the Shia from the Sunni and cut the throats of eighteen Shia men while their wives and children were made to watch.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

His academic accomplishment was rare for a Balti, and he was known and respected throughout Skardu as a devout Shiite scholar.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

They separated the Shia from the Sunni and cut the throats of eighteen Shia men while their wives and children were made to watch.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

The Balti had originally migrated southwest from Tibet, via Ladakh, more than six hundred years ago, and their Buddhism had been scoured away as they traveled over the rocky passes and replaced by a religion more attuned to the severity of their new landscape—Shiite Islam.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

On such a holy day, a good Shiite is supposed to visit the imam’s tomb, but since he was buried in the enemy country of Iraq, we had to settle for his sister’s tomb in Rey, the former capital city of Iran, about an hour’s drive south.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

A few months earlier, Mortenson had read in the Islamabad papers about Pakistan’s latest wave of Sunni-Shiite violence.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

The radio assured Moody that it was, that the holy Shiite armies would wreak swift and sure vengeance upon the American puppets.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

He made contributions to various Shiite groups.

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

Now he was praying like a Sunni at the heart of Shiite Pakistan.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

Mouzafer and the Korphe men were Shiite Muslims, along with Skardu residents Ghulam Parvi, and Makhmal the mason.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

He told Mortenson he had arranged a meeting for him with Syed Abbas Risvi, the religious leader of northern Pakistan’s Shia Muslims.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

He was tall and thin, with the trimmed beard of the Shia scholar who had outshone most of his peers at madrassa in Najaf, Iraq.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

Pakistan’s supreme Shia cleric handed Mortenson an envelope.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

It was flown in a PIA 737 to Skardu, and delivered to the foremost Shia clerics in northern Pakistan for a public reading.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

The Imam Bara Mosque, like much of Shia Pakistan, showed little of its face to the outside world.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

No Shia will dare to interfere with our work now, Inshallah.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

"I was torn between trying quickly to learn how to pray like a Shia and making the most of my opportunity to study the ancient Buddhist woodcarvings on the walls," Mortenson says.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

And as we listened to the Shia children of Korphe, one of the world’s most impoverished communities, talk about how their hopes and dreams for the future had grown exponentially since a big American arrived a decade ago to build them the first school their village had ever known, the general and I were done for.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

While the Supreme Council had pondered Mortenson’s case, they had dispatched spies to inquire into the affairs of the American working at the heart of Shia Pakistan, Parvi says.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

The men questioned Mortenson closely about his work and nodded in approval when they learned he was educating four thousand Sunni Afghan refugees in Peshawar as well as the Shia children of Baltistan.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

And when we found him, we scarcely knew who he was - al Qaeda or Taliban, Shiite or Sunni, Iraqi or foreign, a freedom fighter for Saddam or an insurgent fighting for some kind of a different god from our own, a god who somehow sanctioned murder of innocent civilians, a god who’d effectively booted the Ten Commandments over the touchline and out of play.

Marcus Luttrell -- Lone Survivor

Or are we allies, common enemies of the Shiite majority?

Betty Mahmoody -- Not Without My Daughter

You come all the way from America forů a Shi’a?

Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner

But that spring, the spring of 2001, I was amazed by all their new construction right here in the heart of Shiite Baltistan.